Thursday, January 22, 2015

The Vineyard of the Saker: A Grim and Fatalist Post-Holiday Sitrep for the Dream that Was "NovoRossiya" and the People of the Donbass

Russia will obviously not allow the West-backed and installed Kiev regime to conquer the rump "NovoRossiya" by military means. This latest "offensive" of theirs will either peter out quickly or will end very badly for them if it expands in the Spring.

But the NAF is even less a coherent and organized force than the UAF/batallions (and that's saying a lot because Kiev has very limited control of its warlords and their death squads ie the "battalions) - with no real offensive capability or logistics network. They are only really a defensive force thus far, though it must be said competent at that. The Kremlin, further, purposefully and when necessary, brutally, weeds their leadership and retards their supplies and growth to make sure they cannot become truly independent of either Russia or Ukraine.

The Kremlin has gone out of their way to prevent the NAF from seizing even the rest of Donetsk or Lugansk Republics, letting them keep only this tiny rump principality which is only a third of the territory of the respective two Republics. They wouldn't even let the NAF take Donetsk airport for over 7 months. This was obviously a signal to the West of their limited intentions and an attempt to prevent the conflict from spiraling into anything bigger. The West either appears to have not gotten that message or completely ignored and taken advantage of it. The people who truly suffered from this policy of the Kremlin's are the people of Donetsk and the rank and file NAF. They have hid and died under regular Putsch regime shelling directed through the airport into the residential districts of the city since the summer.

The NAF being "let off the leash" and, after far more of a struggle than it should have been, finally taking their own city's airport tells us two things. First the Kremlin is growing frustrated with both Kiev and the West as negotiations are going nowhere. This is a signal of their discontent, but a very limited one in scope. Second it is painfully obvious that the NAF without greater Russian support than the Russian government has ever given them, or intends to give them (whatever the hysteric and regular pronouncements from Kiev or the Western MSM and governments to the contrary), has NO offensive capability to speak of.

The Kremlin has no intent to either annex Donetsk and Lugansk and take economic responsibility for them and their people - nor to let them expand and become independent. Novorossiya literally has NO economy at all - nor do they have the ability to develop one without massive outside investment which neither the Kremlin nor the West has any intent of giving them. This is very important as NovoRossiya can NEVER be independent nor is it even sustainable in the medium term without one. There is literally NO money, no paying jobs, no economy. Even the standard of life under Putsch neoliberal "austerity" in Ukraine is far better at this point. The people of Donbass are suffering and the vulnerable literally starving to DEATH, and they cannot continue much longer like this.

The NovoRossiya "project" was NOT dreamed up in the Kremlin. It was an organic idea with historical roots that grew out of the desires of the people of the Donbass to get out of the post-Maidan Ukrainian madhouse and encouraged by various Eurasianist and nostalgic-Imperial/Orthodox elements of Russian civil society. Perhaps a few in the Kremlin inner circle of the more conservative patriotic bent tried to pick it up and run with it for a while - but it is obvious that for Putin it was never anything more than toy for leverage with the West to force a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. A "bad cop" approach. But it was never more than a bluff - and it appears that the West has (correctly) called him on it - whatever their public rhetoric on the matter to the contrary.

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RT - News

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